Absorbent articles for personal hygiene, especially those for feminine protection, are typically individually packaged for hygiene reasons. The packaging prevents the articles from being soiled, e.g. by dust, unintended touching and the like. Tampons are typically packaged individually into wrappers for guaranteeing hygienic conditions. These wrappers fully enclose the tampon and consist in most cases of plastic film, such as films made of polyethylene, polypropylene or cellophane. The usual way of opening such wrappers in order to release the tampon for topical application is to separate the wrapper into multiple pieces, whereby creating an opening in the wrapper, through which the tampon can be released. An example for such an opening mechanism is disclosed on EP-A-597,446. This document teaches an airtight tampon wrapper having a line of weakness extending around the whole circumference of the wrapped tampon. By acting on the wrapper on both sides of the line of weakness the wrapper is opened, whereby being separated into at least two non-connected parts. Other commercially available possibilities for opening tampon wrappers include separating the wrapper into multiple pieces by e.g. using tear tapes (e.g. Tampax® or Always® digital tampons).
All current methods for opening tampon wrappers have one drawback in common: They are generating several pieces of waste originating from the wrapper. These pieces have to be collected and disposed. Furthermore, it is inconvenient for the user of the tampon to handle several pieces of waste material originating from the tampon wrapper during the process of inserting a tampon. Thus, it would be beneficial to have a tampon wrapper substantially enclosing an individual tampon in a hygienically satisfying manner, which wrapper is still constituted of a single piece of material even after being opened for releasing the tampon. Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved tampon wrapper fulfilling the above requirements by being provided with an opening means preventing the wrapper from becoming separated into more than one piece of wrapper material upon opening of said wrapper.